Introduction

Prostitution, in the sense of the commercial exchange of sexual services for material advantage, was unknown in Aboriginal society in Australia prior to European settlement. ¹ It arrived in Australia with the First Fleet which brought convicts and their jailers to establish a new colony in Sydney, New South Wales in 1788. ² Commercial sex persisted as an important part of Australian society after the end of the convict period in the middle of the nineteenth century. Even in the British colonies that were not originally convict settlements—namely western Australia and south Australia—prostitution was always a part of the social fabric of the immigrant society and increasingly drew indigenous Australians into these exchanges. This chapter focuses on two case studies from different sides of the Australian continent: Sydney, on the east coast, and Perth, on the west coast. Their different histories illuminate key themes in the history of sex work in Australia. In the case of Sydney, we see a convict society gradually evolving into a free settlement and in the case of Perth, a colony established by free settlers. These two cities provide interesting contrasts, too, in that they developed quite different ways of dealing with prostitution, even when their legal frameworks were very similar. This essay will explore these differences, as well as the similarities between the sex industries in each city. ³

Social Profiles of Sex Workers

Education

The evidence we have about the educational levels of sex workers suggests that in general they were no more nor less educated than the rest of the working classes, from whom most were drawn. After the introduction of compulsory education in the late nineteenth century, almost all Australian-born prostitutes were literate. One exception to this is indigenous women, who had lower levels of literacy in general, especially if they had not had mission education. The other exception is the various waves of transitory sex workers coming from Asia, who (apart from women coming on student visas) have tended to come from poor rural families with low levels of access to education. ⁸

Prior/Parallel Employment

For many women, sex work was only one of many occupations they engaged in during the course of their lives, although for a minority it was their sole career. More commonly, women sold sexual services for a short period of their lives before leaving to marry or to take up other work or establish a business. A minority also sold sex in conjunction with other types of work, such as factory, shop, bar, or office work, either to supplement low wages in these occupations or to tide them over periods of underemployment and unemployment. However, it was difficult to retain a “respectable” job if it became known that a woman was also selling sex and this difficulty increased from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards as middle class notions of respectability permeated the working classes. Since the introduction of fees for university education in the 1990s and the decriminalization of prostitution in several states, more tertiary students have taken up sex work on a part-time basis. ⁹

Family Situation

The ranks of Australia’s sex workers comprised women from every type of family situation—single, married (both legal and de facto), widowed and divorced. They were mothers, daughters and sisters, and sometimes they operated in collaboration with another female member of their family—two sisters working together, for example, or mother-daughter partnerships. It was not unusual for women to marry their clients, and some continued to earn a living in the sex industry after marriage. Aboriginal women usually operated within an extended network of kinship relationships, their earnings contributing to the economic sustenance of the wider group. ¹⁰ Non-Aboriginal women also used the sale and barter of sex as one of a range of strategies by which they contributed to the household economy, especially in times of economic depression. From the late nineteenth century, however, it became increasingly difficult for women to maintain “normal” family structures whilst working in the sex industry: government child welfare agencies increasingly considered prostitution a disqualifying factor for motherhood, and removed the children of prostitutes from the “moral risk” of such homes. From the early twentieth century onwards, stronger legislation against men living off “immoral” earnings meant that it was more difficult for women to live with male relatives whether or not the men were receiving the earnings of their prostitution. Asian women who came to work in Australia throughout this period tended not to have family with them, except sometimes in the case of sisters. However, many had families in their country of origin, whether parents or children, and sent a proportion of their earnings home.

Age Structure

As far as historians can tell, most women who worked in the sex industries of Sydney and Perth were in their twenties and thirties, although it was not unusual to find both younger and older women also working. A study of western Australia’s prostitutes from the 1890s to World War ii found that those women coming under police attention as a group was ageing over this period. But so too was the general female population as the youthful immigrants of the 1890s either aged or departed the state. It is difficult to be very precise about the ages of prostitutes, however, as those coming under police attention may not have been representative of the total prostitute population; it is possible that the police were more inclined to prosecute older women soliciting, for example, or older women may have been more likely to be working on the streets because they were less employable in brothels. Child prostitution has not been a prominent feature of either of these cities, although it has certainly existed with cases of children as young as 10 and 11 selling sex. ¹¹

Physical and Psychological Health

Venereal disease was an occupational hazard for all sex workers in both Perth and Sydney, with the incidence of infection increasing in the late nineteenth century. ¹² Greater awareness of prevention amongst some sections of the sex industry at this time provided some protection for women in the early twentieth century, although it was not until the later stages of World War ii that effective treatment became available for the more virulent venereal diseases. ¹³ The late 1960s brought new challenges as diseases developed resistance to antibiotics and new strands were introduced at the time of Australia’s involvement in the war in Vietnam. When the worldwide hiv/aids crisis emerged in the 1980s, Australia’s sex workers were seen as particularly vulnerable. However, in this instance health authorities worked closely with sex worker organizations to ensure that Australia’s sex industry generally responded effectively to this threat, with education campaigns and prophylactic measures adopted to minimize the impact on sex workers and their clients. ¹⁴

Sex workers were also liable to fall pregnant, particularly before the development of more reliable forms of female-controlled contraception like the pill. Pregnancy itself held dangers for mothers, especially before the development of antibiotics in the 1930s, and maternal death rates were high, as were deaths from abortions. ¹⁵

The Market for Sex

From the earliest days of European settlement, Australia has been a very urban society, despite its rural image. By the late nineteenth century it was one of the most urbanized countries in the world. These centres always provided the major base for the sex industry, particularly the ports, which provided the essential link between this island continent and the rest of the world.

Until the early twentieth century, Australia’s white population was disproportionately male, a fact which also increased the demand for commercial sex. This was especially the case in the early days of Sydney, where women comprised less than a quarter of the population for much of the first sixty years of the convict settlement and even at the end of the transportation period were outnumbered two to one. ¹⁶ The sex ratio in the city began to even out by the middle years of the century, but the seasonal influx of itinerant rural and maritime workers continued to ensure that Sydney retained its predominantly masculine demographic. While the limited labour market for women ensured a steady supply of workers in the sex industry, the ongoing imbalance in the ratio of men to women ensured a ready demand for their services. Even when the balance in the cities had evened out later in the century, there was clearly still a high demand for commercial sex. And visiting seamen and rural workers were by no means the only customers. Many contemporary commentators believed that young single men provided the major demand, a demand made stronger by the fact that many men deferred marriage until they felt they were in a secure financial position. In the last half of the nineteenth century, around 60 per cent of men in Australia under thirty remained unmarried—a much higher proportion than in England or Wales. This was particularly so in the middle classes and aspiring segments of the working classes, where material expectations were higher and men took longer to establish careers. In some cases, such as banks, employees were actually forbidden to marry before they had achieved a certain level of seniority, and hence salary. ¹⁷

But it was not only single men who wished to buy sexual services. Apart from the desire for variety in their sexual lives, married men in colonial Australia had additional reasons to seek sexual satisfaction outside the home. With contraceptive techniques unreliable, married couples faced the prospect of either numerous pregnancies and abortions, or periods of abstinence from sex in order to limit their families. We know that the middle classes were successfully limiting their families in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, and abstinence within marriage played a major part in this success. It is not surprising, then, that married men of this class availed themselves of the services of sex workers, who would take responsibility for any babies conceived. They were also in a financial position to afford such services. ¹⁸

Perth’s sex ratios in the early days of settlement were less severely skewed than those in convict Sydney, but still dominated by men. The discovery of gold in the 1880s had a dramatic impact on the numbers of men in the capital, as men flocked from all over the world to try their luck on the fields. ¹⁹

In Perth as in Sydney, wars also provided a magnet for men, as troops assembled and disembarked from these centres. There have been three main wars affecting the sex industry in Australia: the two world wars and the Vietnam War. In the case of World War i, the major impact was to increase demand for sexual services in the cities where troops gathered for disembarkation to the war zone. Both Sydney and Perth were thus affected, with increases in the numbers of women engaging in prostitution and increases in earnings. World War ii had an even more marked impact, as hundreds of thousands of troops, including us troops, were stationed in or passed through both cities. Sydney, in particular, experienced unprecedented demand for sexual services after Australia became the headquarters for the allied campaign in the Pacific. Similarly, during the Vietnam War Sydney became a popular destination for both Australian and us servicemen on rest and recreation and once again demand for sexual services escalated. The impact on Perth/Fremantle was much less, although the visit of us naval vessels continued to provide periodic boosts to demand both during and after the war, up to the present. ²⁰

Since the earliest days of European colonization, both Perth and Sydney have been subject to high levels of immigration, originally from Britain. From the latter half of the twentieth century immigrants came from a wider range of countries in both Europe and Asia, and more recently, the Middle East and Africa. Migration provided both a demand for prostitution and supplied many of the women who worked as prostitutes. Most noticeable, however, was the arrival in the late 1880s and ‘90s of significant numbers of women from Japan. The Karayuki san, as they were known, were brought from poor areas of Japan under a form of debt bondage which saw them bound to sexual service for many years. During this time, they worked in brothels throughout the mining and port cities of northern Australia. Some also worked in Perth and its port of Fremantle in the 1890s and early 1900s, before the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 prevented further arrivals. ²¹

The arrival of the telegraph in Australia in the 1870s, at the same time as steam ships came to dominate maritime passenger routes, facilitated greater movement and higher levels of coordination and professionalism in the international sex industry. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 cut weeks off the sea journey from Europe to Australia and Asia, further contributing to the speed at which sex industry entrepreneurs could respond to shifting markets for sexual labour. Australia was part of this international movement, with workers and entrepreneurs (both male and female) from Europe and Asia arriving in Fremantle/Perth to take advantage of the booming mining economy. In some cases, Australian women joined the international traffic, travelling to Asia and Europe, and sometimes stopping off in Buenos Aires. The reduction in the cost of air travel in the 1970s facilitated the increase in numbers of women arriving in Australia specifically to work in the sex industry, initially from Asia but more recently also from eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Africa. ²²

Starting in the 1920s, cars also formed an important part of the sex industry, in some cases providing vehicles from which women solicited. Tilly Devine, a notorious Sydney sex worker and entrepreneur, solicited from the back seat of her husband’s Cadillac in the early 1920s. More commonly, motor vehicles provided an opportunity for men to solicit and pick up street workers. In the 1960s, escort agencies used cars to transport workers to clients’ homes, businesses, or hotels.

The increasing use of telephones in the early twentieth century contributed to the ease of communications, but the impact was felt more at the local than international level: in the 1920s, Sydney’s first “call girls” made their appearance, the telephone allowing them to conduct their business more discretely with a select clientele. Public phone boxes also provided convenient places for women to advertise their services with a contact phone number. By the late twentieth century, phone sex had arrived, with women charging customers for erotic conversations over the telephone. The internet provided further opportunities for technologically-assisted virtual sex, as well as a new medium for advertising sexual services.

Changing attitudes to women and sexuality also had an impact on the market for sex. The movement for greater equality for women, which began in Australia in the 1870s, had only a limited impact on the demand and supply of commercial sexual services before the 1960s. Although employment opportunities for women did widen somewhat in the late nineteenth century, prostitution was still the most lucrative economic option. The “first wave” women’s movement affected the sex industry indirectly through feminists’ agitation for stronger laws and enforcement in relation to so-called “trafficking”, or coerced prostitution, and to men living off the proceeds of prostitution. ²³ The revived feminist movement in the 1960s and ‘70s contributed to new official approaches which decriminalized prostitution and made it easier for women to work in the sex industry. At the same time, more relaxed attitudes to sexuality in Australian society generally meant that women outside the sex industry were more willing to engage in extra-marital sex. This also reduced the demand for commercial sexual services, particularly for straight vaginal intercourse. The net effect of this increased supply and reduction in demand has been reduced earnings for sex workers over the period since the 1970s, and a greater demand for more “exotic” kinds of services from sex workers. ²⁴

Legalislative and Policing Context

All of this commercial sexual exchange occurred within a specific legislative and policing framework which changed over time. For most of the colonial period up to 1901, Australian authorities treated prostitution as a “necessary evil”, seeking to ameliorate those aspects that offended neighbours and the public, such as rowdy brothels and flagrant soliciting, through the disorderly houses acts and vagrancy laws. This was the case for both Sydney and Perth, although in both cities the situation began to change in the late nineteenth century.

Impact of Policing Regimes on Working Conditions

All these shifts in the legislative environment and in policing regimes had profound effects on the working conditions of women in the sex industry. The ability of women to solicit in public is a case in point. Both Perth and Sydney are blessed with relatively mild climates, making outdoor soliciting a more comfortable option than in many other parts of the world. Such soliciting—and, indeed, outdoor sexual activity—has existed to varying degrees throughout the history of both cities. Street soliciting was widespread in Sydney in the colonial period, becoming more heavily policed in the late nineteenth century as middle-class women began to use public urban streets more frequently for shopping and recreation. A similar development occurred in Perth, where soliciting in the central business district was more heavily policed starting in the early twentieth century and streetwalkers pushed across the railway line into the area north of the city now known as Northbridge. As we have seen, during World War i a section of Roe Street in this area became an unofficial red-light area supervised by the police. Brothels were allowed to operate in this area providing they abided by a set of police rules, one of which was that the women did not solicit in the street. This arrangement was in place until the brothels were closed in 1958. Thereafter, street soliciting reappeared sporadically, particularly in the northern and eastern areas adjacent to the central business district. Most of Perth’s sex industry was, however, conducted in massage parlours and from escort agencies.

Although central Sydney housed some large brothels in the early 1850s, these were dispersed by the police in the mid-1850s, their inmates scattering to the adjoining streets and lanes and to the portside suburb of Woolloomooloo. For the rest of the nineteenth century, large numbers of women continued to solicit quite openly in streets adjoining Sydney’s central business district. However, after changes in the law in 1908, police action against soliciting increased. ³⁴ As we have seen, the legal changes of 1908 also made it virtually impossible for men to be involved in the sex industry without facing criminal charges, which also contributed to a decline in street prostitution as without their male associates women were more vulnerable to violence from clients and other men. In the decades after 1908, Sydney’s sex industry increasingly moved indoors to brothels owned and managed by women who were not liable under the legislation for living off the proceeds of prostitution.

With the exception of a small group of call girls who began operations in Sydney’s wealthier eastern suburbs in the 1930s, between 1908 and the 1960s almost all of the city’s commercial sex was sold in the streets, brothels, and bars of the inner suburbs, stretching from the Woolloomooloo wharves through East Sydney to Surry Hills. In the 1950s, a prominent feature of this area was “The Doors”, which were rented to individual women on a half-day shift basis. There were up to forty such houses operating at any one time, employing between them over one hundred women. The working women usually had an older woman as a “sitter”, who provided security. These “shabby but homely” houses catered for the many visiting seamen and for the thousands of immigrant men who, from the late 1940s, often came to Australia before their wives or as single men. ³⁵

The older style brothel with a madam and a number of girls was almost unknown in Sydney in the 1960s, having gradually disappeared in the 1950s to be replaced by this more intimate style of brothel. The only other kind of “in-house” prostitution took place at coffee shops and green grocer stores that took a commission from clients sent to women working in the upstairs rooms. Massage parlours were only beginning to appear on the scene in the mid-1960s, and initially these offered only “hand relief”.

As well as the easily identified “Doors”, prospective clients would still find plenty of streetwalkers plying their trade in the suburbs east of the city centre. These women tended to be younger, in their teens and 20s rather than their 30s and 40s as were the women of the Doors. The beats frequented by streetwalkers were along the streets of Kings Cross, including Darlinghurst Road. Each stretch of a beat was occupied by a particular woman or group of women, who defended the territory with enthusiasm, and violence if necessary. These workers were subject to considerable harassment from the police, and paid heavily in fines and bribes, until changes to the law in 1979 (amended in 1983) decriminalized street prostitution. Thereafter, street work became more attractive and still flourishes in commercial areas of the city.

Impact of Policing Regimes on Relations with Clients and Employers

Legislative and policing frameworks also affected relations within the sex industry. Women selling sex in convict Sydney were often associated with “bullies” or “bludgeoners”—men who provided physical protection for the women against other men but often also inflicted violence on the women themselves. But this was not always the case, and others operated as individuals or as madams independently of men. The changes to the law in 1908 which made men associated with prostitution liable to criminal charges and imprisonment meant that thereafter only the most criminally-inclined men continued to openly associate with prostitutes. This fostered the emergence of the criminal gangs who dominated the Sydney scene in the 1920s and early ‘30s until harsher consorting laws in the early 1930s disbanded them. At the same time, the 1908 laws opened the way for the famous Sydney “vice queens”, Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, who dominated Sydney’s underworld in the interwar years. Unlike men, they could not be prosecuted for living off the proceeds of prostitution.

As we have seen, the tougher laws against soliciting and more vigorous policing, combined with criminal sanctions against male “protectors”, drove many women off the streets into the brothels. Here they were forced to share their earnings with the madam and lost the independence they had as freelancers. While women working in these brothels received some protection, they were also often paid for their services in cocaine and the drug was used as a way to keep sex workers dependent.

A similar situation arose in the 1960s, when the increasing traffic in heroin, combined with the presence of Vietnam War troops, saw another boom in organized crime in Sydney. Sydney’s sex workers at that time found it almost impossible to escape extortion and violence at the hands of criminal gangs. Crime and police corruption continued to be prominent features of Sydney’s sex industry for the remainder of the twentieth century, although the decriminalization of many forms of prostitution in the 1980s reduced but did not eliminate the scope for these activities.

At the same time as Sydney’s prostitution laws were being liberalized, Australia became the destination for a new wave of immigrant sex workers, primarily from Asia. These workers arrived under various kinds of debt bondage arrangements, whereby they were required to repay their fares, visas, etc., before receiving any earnings. These “debts” often amounted to tens of thousands of dollars, and could increase after arrival in Australia. Likewise, some operators ensured that the women never earned any money of their own by informing on them to the immigration authorities, who then deported the women as illegal immigrants. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, greater awareness of this issue and new federal legislation and more energetic policing has meant that more of these operators have been prosecuted, but the practice still exists.

Other Factors Shaping Working Conditions and Cultures

It was not only the policing regimes that affected the shape of the sex industry and the experience of those involved in it. As the case studies of Perth and Sydney illustrate, the nature and size of cities was an important determinant of the scale and diversity of the industry and associated workplace cultures.

In convict Sydney, prostitution was closely associated with the convict system: most of the women selling sex were either convicts or former convicts. With the assisted immigration of free women in the 1830s, free working class women also entered the sex industry. However, for the most part, the sex industry was still integrally related to the rough culture of convictism and merged into the communities of convicts, ex-convicts, and poorer immigrants who settled in the areas around the Rocks in Sydney.

With the end of convictism and increasing free immigration, especially with gold discoveries in the 1850s, the sex industry expanded and diversified. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the police in Sydney counted upwards of 500 women selling sex on a full-time basis, while Perth recorded up to several hundred. ³⁷ The sex industry at this time was structured hierarchically, with conditions, earnings, and status varying according to one’s location in this hierarchy. The types of establishments selling sex proliferated with increasing urbanization: the bigger and more prosperous the city, the greater the variety.

At the top end of the market, defined by the prices charged and the status of the clientele, were the “grand brothels”, which flourished for a short period of time in mid-nineteenth-century Sydney. Such brothels were lavishly furnished, equipped with the best champagnes and spirits, and staffed by well-dressed, attractive young women. Their prices reflected their pretensions to exclusivity. The women in these houses had no need to solicit custom, as the notoriety of the houses ensured that clients sought them out. Alternatively, Sydney’s higher class demi-monde might rendezvous with potential clients in the private boxes of the theatres.

At the next level down the status ladder were those brothels that were comfortably if not expensively furnished and which employed young women to solicit custom from prominent city streets in the evenings and from the theatres and racetracks. Also found soliciting at the theatres and in the streets were the so-called “clandestines”, women who came in from the suburbs for a few hours each evening. These women took their customers to houses of assignation or short-time houses—sometimes a hotel—where they could purchase the use of a room for as long as their customer’s payment allowed. Although not as elaborately attired as the “dressed girls”, these women adopted the appearance of “decency” rather than conspicuous sexual allure, appealing to men who preferred a quiet woman to an obvious harlot. Such a woman might build up a small but regular clientele who visited her in her own suburban house, rather than have to go into the city to seek custom.

Below these women were the streetwalkers more usually referred to as “common prostitutes”, women and girls who were seen frequently about the streets and hotels of the cities and wharves both in the daytime and throughout the night, maximizing their earnings by the number of customers rather than the scale of their fees. They were often older than the average sex worker, and more likely to be diseased and heavy drinkers. These women might reside in a house with a few other such women, or live with men who “protected” them and with whom they shared their earnings. They took customers back to their homes, short-time houses, or hotels. More economically if less comfortably, women transacted their business in one of the many public parks.

At the very lowest end of the market were those women who operated out of the meaner dwellings in the back lanes of the central city and near the wharves. On par with these women were the sex workers who catered for “coloured” clients, who were mostly Chinese, but also Syrians, Indians, and Lascars. The status of a sex worker was thus defined by the race and class of her clients as well as by her age, appearance, and habits. ³⁸

Each class of sex worker attracted a certain type of client, although these were not rigid categories. As we have noted, the “grand brothels” were patronized by those with money and often with social position. The middle range of options were, not surprisingly, patronized by a variety of men of the middling classes: both married and unmarried and of moderate means. The men who sought out the “clandestines”, particularly those who operated discretely in suburban houses, were perhaps looking for the illusion of romance and even domesticity. Women who frequented the wharves dealt mainly with seamen and wharf labourers, while the customers who found themselves in the “dens” in the back lanes of the major capital cities were more likely to be rural workers who had come to the city to spend their end-of-season cheques. Streetwalkers, however, picked up a diverse clientele which included clerks and tradesmen as well as labourers.

As well as affecting the volume of sold sex, client demand clearly shaped the types of services provided by sex workers. This demand varied with the class of the client, being a product of both masculine desires and the client’s ability to pay to satisfy these desires. The experience of working in the sex industry at this time thus depended very much on which part of the industry a woman worked in: women in the higher-class brothels were expected to provide a greater range of both sexual and emotional services than those offering a cheap, quick outlet for the pent-up lusts of visiting seamen or bushmen. For the madams of the elite brothels, the industry was generally comfortable and lucrative. For every pound the “girls” earned, they took ten shillings. Also, sales of liquor contributed in no small way to their total earnings. The only risk such women faced was the threat of prosecution for keeping a disorderly house.

However, it was rare for the keepers of these houses to be charged by the police, because they both operated discreetly and therefore did not offend “public order”, and also because policemen were reluctant to embarrass clients who included their superior officers and members of the colonial establishment. Even when prosecutions were launched, the bench often proved reluctant to convict the keepers or inmates of these “flash” houses. Operating with virtual immunity from police intervention, such women could become very wealthy indeed.

For the “girls” in their employ, the opportunity to work in comfortable, even luxurious, surroundings, and not have to solicit in public, must have been enormously attractive. For women who feared public notoriety, these high-class establishments provided a degree of protection from the public gaze and were a favoured first port of call for “respectable” women deciding on a career, or short stint, in the sex industry. These brothels also protected their inmates against male violence and arrest. For those able to avoid the temptations of alcohol, the relatively high earnings allowed women to accumulate sufficient savings to finance an independent life, either as a madam or in some other business venture. Some, too, became mistresses or even wives of their clients. ³⁹

Their working lives were not, however, without risks. Venereal diseases were no respecters of social class. Although madams kept a close eye on their workers and encouraged regular medical check-ups, infection was not unheard of. Once infected, the “girls” could find themselves turned out of these “grand brothels” and forced to seek a livelihood elsewhere, moving down through the options outlined above if unable to secure a cure. Likewise, pregnancy was a real possibility although the risks of pregnancy were less for well-paid women working in “flash” houses with good sanitary facilities and could avail themselves of the increasing range of contraceptive devices coming onto the colonial market. Pessaries, douches, “Dutch caps”, and condoms were all available in Australia in the 1880s and ‘90s, although relatively expensive, the latter providing protection against venereal diseases as well as pregnancy. That these devices were commonly used by sex workers is indicated by the fact that they were regarded by disapproving contemporaries as “the contrivances of the brothel”. ⁴⁰ If all else failed, such women could afford the services of a medical practitioner to secure an abortion, and these “flash” houses had doctors regularly attending the inmates to monitor their health.

Women and girls employed in the medium-range brothels also enjoyed a certain degree of protection from violence, but those located in residential areas could face prosecution if their presence upset their neighbours. ⁴¹ Women working in medium-range brothels also shared their earnings with the brothel-keeper, but generally earned enough to live well and save provided they did not drink heavily. Like their counterparts in the more elite establishments, they too faced the risks of disease and pregnancy, but probably many took precautions. Like the madams in the elite brothels, the women who operated these medium-grade brothels could accumulate considerable wealth, allowing them to invest in additional brothels. At both the top and middle levels of the industry, women operated independently or in partnership with another woman, relying on word of mouth and/or commissions to cab drivers for their custom. ⁴²

At the bottom of the brothel hierarchy were those in the less salubrious parts of town that catered for visiting sailors and rural workers as well as Chinese and other “coloured” labourers. These were often run by men as well as women, and tended to be more disorderly in the literal sense of the word, encouraging heavy drinking and gambling as well as sex, and often being the site of drunken brawls between clients and sometimes between the women. The women who worked in these brothels did not necessarily live on the premises but paid the keeper for the use of a room and access to the custom that the house’s notoriety ensured. ⁴³ The conditions under which these women and girls worked were often appalling. Housing was substandard and overcrowded, and furniture, if it existed, of the crudest form.

Pregnancy and venereal disease were always a reality, although women did seek treatment if not prevention. Those who went to jail received some treatment, however inadequate. Others sought free treatment at the various underfunded asylums and public hospitals, some of which provided separate wards for cases of venereal diseases. As well as being vulnerable to disease, women who worked in the Chinese and other so-called “lower class” brothels were often arrested on vagrancy charges. Racial prejudices ensured that the former were particularly singled out by the police and treated unsympathetically by magistrates. The major compensations for women who worked in the lower end of the sex trade were the conviviality and comradeship of working with “mates”, and, of course, the money they earned, which even at the lowest end of the scale was at least double what a woman could earn at a respectable occupation.

The “clandestines” who visited the city from the suburbs took more risks than the “dressed girls” and the brothel inmates. They might pick up a violent customer, and the houses of assignation and short-time houses provided less protection against such men than the brothels. On the other hand, it was easier for such women to avoid being classed as common prostitutes, especially if they could demonstrate an alternative means of income. These women could also keep most of their earnings, their major expense being for “short-time” accommodation. Dressed less conspicuously and typically coming into town only two or three nights a week, and then for only a few hours, they were less visible and less likely to be identified as sex workers by either the police or the general public. They were, however, likely to be more vulnerable to disease, not having the benefit of any treatment while in jail and also being less likely to seek treatment privately.

As well as disease, “clandestines” were particularly vulnerable to pregnancy. Women identifying as prostitutes had few babies, particularly when compared to married women. While it is clear that an enormous number of abortions were carried out in the late nineteenth century, women without professional connections in the sex industry would have found it more difficult to access safe and affordable practitioners. They were no doubt well represented amongst the women who died as a result of botched and unsanitary abortions. ⁴⁴

Women and girls who worked full-time as streetwalkers were potentially the most vulnerable, being about the streets at all hours and often taking their customers to exposed and dangerous places like public parks. These women were the targets for gangs of youths—“larrikins”, as they were called—who perpetrated pack rape upon them, secure in the knowledge that the courts were lenient in cases of the rape of prostitutes. To give themselves a measure of protection, women tended to solicit in groups and have male companions watch them from a safe distance. They also became adept at avoiding the uniformed police, who were required to keep to a regular beat. Homeless women found in the streets were especially liable to arrest, and could be charged as vagrants for having no fixed address and insufficient lawful means of support. Those whom the police said were selling sex were very likely to be sent to jail, rather than to private benevolent homes, as were “respectable” homeless women. ⁴⁵

Streetwalkers were also the most vulnerable to disease and pregnancy, as it was more difficult to afford and to use prophylactic techniques in such circumstances. The major advantage of streetwalking, however, was that it allowed a woman a great deal of independence. She was not subject to surveillance by a brothel-keeper, and could keep all her earnings. Some streetwalkers reportedly did manage to accumulate enough to invest in a business of their own, where they became the madam. The independence of the streetwalker, however, could come at a huge cost, and sometimes proved illusory. Male companions could turn out to be exploiters and abusers rather than protectors, and certain identification as a common prostitute placed women at a serious disadvantage in colonial society. ⁴⁶

It is important to note that women did move between the various types of sex work in colonial times. Some accumulated enough capital from streetwalking to set up as brothel-keepers; an individual brothel-keeper, renting her house, might make enough to buy the property or even several properties. On the other hand, women could move down as well as up, especially if they became addicted to alcohol. Thus, a woman might begin her days in a high-class brothel and gradually make her way down to the brothels of the back lanes.

To some extent, these gradations and hierarchies of status and income persisted into the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. But as we have seen, the world that professional prostitutes encountered in the late 1930s was very different from the one that confronted their nineteenth-century counterparts. Changes to laws and methods of policing, coupled in the case of New South Wales with the rise of organized crime, meant that it became much more difficult to operate as a full-time freelance worker. These changes also altered the relationship of prostitutes to the working-class communities in which they traditionally operated, increasingly marking out full-time sex workers as part of a deviant underworld. The 1904 Evil Fame legislation in western Australia, and the later New South Wales consorting laws, made respectable sections of the population subject to imprisonment for associating with criminals and known prostitutes.

Similarly, the stronger laws against soliciting in public meant that any women seen talking in the street to sex workers risked being accused of soliciting, while all men living with prostitutes fell under suspicion of the new laws against living off the earnings of prostitution. This meant that even male relatives in paid employment could be convicted of living off the earnings of their mothers, wives, sisters, or daughters simply because they shared a house with them or were “habitually in their company”. Penalties for landlords who knowingly let their premises to those engaged in the sex industry drove a wedge between respectable property owners and women who had previously found landlords keen to accept the higher rents they could pay. This opened up another opportunity for criminal elements to exploit the need of prostitutes for accommodation. Stricter enforcement of licensing laws similarly made it more risky for hotel licensees to allow known prostitutes to linger on their premises, literally forcing such women out into the cold to ply their trade.

These changes were part of a broader attempt in western society to mark out “deviant” sections of the working class and isolate them from the respectable mainstream in order to maintain more effective surveillance and control of their activities. Certain modes of behaviour that had once been accepted became pathologized and criminalized, and individuals who persisted in these behaviours found themselves the targets of police, medical, and other attention, often ending up in asylums, prisons, reformatories, or other institutions. ⁴⁷

In Australia this class-based assault took on a particular racial/ethnic character, as governments attempted to contain the potentially “contaminating” influences of Aboriginal populations by confining them to reserves, restricting their employment opportunities, and attempting to control their personal/sexual relationships. Even the tolerated brothels of western Australia can be seen in this light: institutions in which the authorities hoped to isolate and control the potentially disruptive freelance prostitutes.

But while these efforts were successful in changing the working lives and personal relationships of full-time sex workers, it is equally apparent that many women avoided the attention of the authorities by selling sex in “a quiet way”, usually on a part-time basis. These “amateurs” and “clandestines” continued to challenge the controlling attempts of the state, which in turn tried harder to classify women on the basis of their sexuality. The desire to mark out and control those selling sex thus affected the lives of all women, as their sexuality was under constant scrutiny and classification, regardless of economic class.

Although these attempts clearly impinged on women’s lives, they were only ever partially successful and often contested. Women selling sex were particularly resourceful in resisting attempts to stigmatize them and regulate their behaviour. They were always creative in finding ways to avoid arrest and prosecution. The case of Sydney madam Kate Leigh demonstrates how some women campaigned to counter attempts to stereotype and isolate them from local communities. Leigh wrote letters to the press contesting media representations of her actions, and dispensed largesse to local charities; she was engaging in what today would be regarded as a very successful public relations exercise.

On a less grand scale, some women cultivated relationships in the neighbourhoods in which they lived and worked, with apparent success. They were generous in providing financial support to those less fortunate, and careful not to offend sensibilities by exposing their children to foul language and male clients. Some also minded children so that their mothers could go out to work. ⁴⁸

On the other side of the continent a woman with a police record for prostitution-related offences protested Policewoman Dugdale’s allegation that she was a negligent mother: “I’m as good a bloody woman as any other bloody woman around here”, she shouted. ⁴⁹ Such talking back may not have convinced the police or the court, but it indicated that women did not necessarily accept or internalize the labels put on them by authorities.

While women’s own efforts to assert a counter-definition of what it meant to sell sex were clearly important, perhaps most important in undermining and complicating official attempts to mark out prostitutes as a deviant subclass was the advent of the “spectacular modern woman” in the person of the flapper. Arriving in the cities and towns of Australia in the later wartime years and the 1920s, the modern young woman challenged traditional notions of respectable femininity not just by her short skirts and “look at me” appearance but also by her financial independence, her presence on the streets and public transport, and her pursuit of pleasure. Smoking cigarettes and dancing the Charleston, wearing revealing clothes and make-up, indulging in the pleasures of consumerism—modern young women confused observers who sought a clear demarcation between “good” and “bad” women. ⁵¹ All this confusion was to the great advantage of women selling sex, many of whom continued to evade easy classification by moving between and across, or by redefining, the boundaries of the respectable: “as good a bloody woman as any other …” ⁵²

Conclusion

This study has shown that similar legislative frameworks can produce radically different outcomes for working conditions in the sex industry. In both Sydney and Perth the increasing criminalization of prostitution-related activities in the early twentieth century created new opportunities for individuals and groups to exert control over sex workers. In the case of Perth, the police, sometimes in collusion with local governments and medical authorities, were able to introduce an unofficial policy of “containment” whereby sex workers operated in places and under rules established by the police. In Sydney, harsher laws provided an opportunity for criminal gangs to work in collusion with a corrupt police force to extort payments and exert physical control over sex workers. In both instances, the outcomes for sex workers were worse, with decreased earnings and less control over the location and nature of the sexual services provided and the conditions under which these were delivered. This situation persisted until the late twentieth century when new approaches to decriminalizing aspects of prostitution in Sydney reduced the opportunities for extortion and police corruption. Perth has resisted making changes, despite attempts in recent years to partially decriminalize and license the sex industry. ⁵³ In both cases, attitudes continue to change, as legislators grapple with the ongoing tension between the civil rights of sex workers and the perceived interests of the wider community.